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Beehive
A beehive is a valuable "animal" in the online game CountryLife. The bees fly out of a beehive to pollinate blooming clover and return to produce pots of honey, which can be sold for 5 coins or, more profitably, used as an ingredient in jam or pie. Unlike all other animals in CountryLife, bees do not consume any crop; you can harvest the clover after it has been pollinated and sell it or feed it to your cows. The honey, therefore, is essentially free and represents 100% profit--the only cost being the time devoted to waiting for the bees and collecting the honey. A regular beehive may be purchased at the Store for 2,000 coins. You earn 20 XP when you buy one. With a regular beehive, it takes 30 seconds from the time the bees return to the hive until they produce a pot of honey. If there are three pots waiting for collection, the bees stop working until one is collected. If no longer required, it can be sold for 40 coins. A Starline Beehive may be purchased at the Store for 15 Ranch Cash. With a Starline Beehive, it takes 20 seconds from the time the bees return to the hive until they produce a pot of honey. Both types of beehive occupy a footprint of 1 x 1½ squares. The time required for the bees to fly to and return from the clover is in addition to the time required for the bees to actually produce the honey. To minimize the time that the bees are in flight, you will want to place your beehives in or around your clover field so that they are equally spaced. Ideally, the hives should be separated so that the bees from each hive will range over a different part of your field. Description in game : Controlling the bees If the bees run out of unpollinated blooming clover they may go to sleep and not wake when more blooms appear; you have five possible ways to wake them: # refresh the page # collect a honeypot (which you could have left there exactly for this contingency) # use the Move Tool to adjust the beehive and replace it # sacrifice 5 coins by harvesting one field crop square # turn on/off automation on one beehive, if you have ops left Sometime, you might not want the bees to automatically start pollinating clover. For instance, when you are harvesting other crops, moving things around, or when you start the game, you might not want to have the bees flying around right away. If you leave three honeypots in front of each beehive, the bees will not emerge until you remove one. Pollination in a greenhouse Incidentally, if you plant clover in a greenhouse and the beehives are on the outside, the bees can still pollinate the clover. They magically pass through the glass, going in and coming out. Food chain How the bees work (an amusing experiment) This section has nothing at all to do with gameplay; it's simply a little insight into the programming behind CountryLife. The bees in each hive must determine, before they leave the hive, whether there is clover ready to be pollinated and which patch to go to. Once they have chosen a patch, none of the bees from any other hive can select that same patch. Once the bees have left the hive, their route to and from that patch is predetermined. So, what would the bees do if you were to harvest the patch that they have selected, before they get there? Will they immediately turn around? Will they try to pollinate an empty patch? Will they still produce a jar of honey? As it turns out, they're fairly smart. The bees go all the way to the empty patch but they do not hover there--as soon as they discover that the clover in that patch is gone, they head back to the hive and they do not produce a jar of honey. External links *Dusty's tutorial with good pictures